Army commando killed in ongoing J& K gunfight
◗ The militants, sources said, have been surrounded from 3 sides and Army helicopters have been pressed into service for air surveillance and track down them
A soldier of the Army’s Para ( Special Forces) was killed and another wounded in a gunfight with separatist militants raging in woods of Jammu and Kashmir’s frontier district of Kupwara since Wednesday morning.
The slain soldier of 3 Para, the special force unit of the Army attached to the Parachute Regiment, has been identified as Sepoy Mukul Meena.
“He was critically injured during the firefight going on in Sadu Ganga forest area of Kupwara’s Kandi belt. He was evacuated to the nearest military hospital at Drugmulla, where doctors declared him brought dead,” said a police official. The condition of the injured soldier is stated to be stable.
Army sources said that intermittent exchange of fire took place at Sadu Ganga after the Army’s 47 Rashtriya Rifles confronted a group of militants hiding in the woods on Tuesday afternoon.
The standoff continued for some time, but militants managed to escape from the area on Tuesday evening.
However, the Army reinforcements, including Para commandos, laid siege to a vast area around Sadu Ganga at dawn on Wednesday to launch a massive search operation for the militants.
In the afternoon, the fighting broke out again between the two sides, SSP ( Kupwara) Ambarkar Shriram Dinkar said, adding that the exchanges were underway as the reports last came in from the area.
The militants, police sources said, have been surrounded from three sides and Army helicopters have been pressed into service for air surveillance and track down them. The sources said that the militants could be part of a fresh group of infiltrators as the area where gunfight is on falls in close proximity of the Line of Control ( LoC). A minor boy was killed and four others, including a girl, were injured in a blast inside a residential compound in southern Shopian district of the Valley on Wednesday.
The police said that the explosion took place in the residential compound of one Khursheed Ahmad Sheikh in Meemandar village of Shopian, resulting in injuries to five children, all aged between six and eight years. One of them, identified as Salik Iqbal Sheikh, was declared brought dead when the injured were taken to the hospital. The condition of the three injured is stated to be critical.
The police said that the preliminary investigations suggest that the children were fiddling with the explosive when it exploded.
The police said that the preliminary investigations suggest that the children were fiddling with the explosive when it exploded
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The normal life across Kashmir Valley was disrupted on Wednesday due to a shutdown call issued by an alliance of key separatist leaders against the killing of a civilian and injuries to dozens of other in security forces’ actions against protesters and stone- pelting mobs in Shopian’s Kundalan village on Tuesday.
22- year- old you Khalid Gaffar Malik was killed and another wounded when the Army opened fire on a stone- pelting crowd in Trehgam area of Kupwara on Wednesday evening, police sources said.
Shops and other businesses and schools remained closed in the Valley whereas only skeleton transport services plied on select routes in Srinagar and most other parts of the Valley.
Clashes erupted at Kundalan on Tuesday during an encounter in which two Jaish- e- Muhammad ( JeM) militants, one of them believed to be a Pakistani national, were killed by the security forces. Two Army personnel, including a JCO, were injured.
The police had said that a local youth, Tamsheel Ahmed Khan, was caught in cross fire during the encounter between militants and the security forces and died in the hospital later.
However, the locals claimed that he was part of a crowd which protested near the site of the encounter and was fired upon by security forces.